Taken

A group of actors is about to become unemployed.

There’s a certain kind of actor out there – you know the type. A thespian like Mark Dacascos, say, or Steven Segal or Jean-Claude Van Damme. This guy is a working actor, he’s paying the bills, and he’s turning out one direct-to-video feature after another. In one film, he’s an ex-soldier out for revenge. In another, a kung fu master come down from the mountaintop to get the precious MacGuffin. In yet another, he’s a cop, or a spy, or an accountant who works out a lot. It’s all the same, and it all pays the bills: the actor sneers, he shoots, he kicks people in the face. Then he goes home, cashes his check, and everybody’s happy.

And then, a Liam Neeson comes along. An Academy Award nominee. A marquee name. Darkman, for Pete’s sake! And he makes a movie like TAKEN, in which he plays an ex-CIA agent who is both Out for Revenge and Getting the MacGuffin. Not only does he act the pants off of everyone else in the genre, but it turns out he’s got some pretty good moves in the stunt department, to boot. Hey, Liam, bit of advice: it’s unwise to enter these guys’ territory. They may be desperate men.

TAKEN, then, serves as an exercise in the farfetched: what happens when you take a capable, respected actor, surround him with stuntmen, and tell him to go kick some ass? I’ll tell you what happens: asses get kicked, and they kicked by a guy whose conviction the audience never thinks to question. Liam Neeson takes TAKEN, your standard, DTV-type revenge / MacGuffin thriller, and elevates it to something more: a study in desperation, in love, and in high-class ass-kickery the likes of which you’ve never seen before.

In the process, however, TAKEN calls the entire future of the DTV thriller into question. Will Judi Dench soon play an edge – of – retirement assassin out to do one … last … job? When can we expect Sean Penn to show us his chops as an idealistic former cop who must kickbox his way through a corrupt police force to avenge his former partner? Personally, I’m holding out for the mother lode: Kate Winslet as a post-apocalyptic savior, preferably one with a totally awesome car, or maybe eyes that blink sideways.

It’s only a matter of time. But when that day comes, a certain class of actor will be out of work. It’ll be Neeson’s fault. Perhaps he can hire a few members of the old cadre as bodyguards.

Torn Curtain

Casting is TORN CURTAIN's blessing and curse.

It's a blessing because Julie Andrews and Paul Newman are strong, magnetic performers with whom we feel a natural affinity. It's a curse because Julie Andrews is too powerful to convince as the devoted lover who'll follow her man to the gates of Hell, and Paul Newman is too fundamentally decent to convince as the kind of guy who'd take her there. But hey, give yourself a little extra nudge in the suspension of disbelief department, and you're in for a tight little thriller.

Here's the setup: Newman is a physicist who has been working on anti - ballistic missile project, since cancelled. Andrews is his devoted assistant and squeeze (there's some talk about a wedding date, but most of it's from Andrews). They're attending a conference in Denmark when Newman gets a coded message, grows cold, and departs in a rush with a lousy explanation about a job in Sweden. Andrews, no fool, checks his tickets and discovers that - gasp - he's on his way to East Berlin. Is Newman actually a communist spy? What's going on?

Since a movie like this relies on twists and turns, I'm not going to say much more about its story. I will say that Alfred Hitchcock, the film's director, could generate tension in his sleep. Even as he chooses sets and photographic techniques that remind us he's merely spinning a yarn, the guy knows how to do it. TORN CURTAIN clips right along, maintains a sense of adventure and danger, and generally does what it sets out to do. Even if it isn't entirely successful, it at least gives us an opportunity to spend a couple of hours with Andrews and Newman. And that ain't bad.

Frozen River

"For me, the human face is the most important subject of the cinema.” -- Ingmar Bergman

Observe the face of Ray. No. First, observe the toe of Ray. It sports an old tattoo, a remnant of wilder times. Now, observe the face. It’s lined; worried. The eyes, bordered in basic mascara, don’t blink away the cigarette smoke wafting from the downturned mouth. They do blink away tears formed in flicker of despair. The face, so near to crumbling, pulls itself together and Ray Eddy straightens, goes back into her single wide, and does her best.

Courtney Hunt, the writer and director of FROZEN RIVER, understands that Bergman was right. Hunt knows how to build a story, inspire pathos, pace a scene, and create near-unbearable tension, and she does it by focusing on faces. Whether we’re watching Ray, brought to life in an Oscar nominated performance by Melissa Leo; Lila, played with quiet assurance by Misty Upham; or the people who need them; we care about them because their faces compel us to do so.

Because of this, FROZEN RIVER takes a place among the most compelling films I’ve seen this year. This film hooked me in its first five minutes through the extraordinary power of the human face, and it hasn’t let go of me yet. Its dilemmas, its characters, its milieu feel absolutely real as I dwell on them, and I find that its power grows with greater consideration.

This is Courtney Hunt’s first film, and it’s a masterpiece. IMDb tells me that her next feature will be called Northline and, though I have no idea what it’s about, I plan to see it. This is a woman who knows what she’s about, and who understands that it’s all in the face.

Winning

WINNING is a lousy movie. It’s poorly constructed, features a show-stoppingly bad performance from a major supporting actor, and fails to excite even in its centerpiece racing scenes.

The film, set in the world of stock car racing, begins with Paul Newman winning a race. He has a few drinks at the victory party, wanders around town, and charms a local floozy. Three or four scenes later, they’re married, and the rest of the film depends upon my investment in their relationship. But here’s the thing: for a love story to work, we have to fall in love (even if it’s just a little) with the characters. With WINNING, I don’t even know who these people are, much less have a reason to care whether or not they make it as a family. There’s your weak foundation. The film is poorly shot and edited; with jagged and wobbly camera movements competing for your distraction with montages and transitions of such jarring mediocrity that it’s hard to believe this is a feature film. Finally, Dave Grusin’s dead-jazz score is so limp that it distracts us with its mediocrity.

While Paul Newman, Joanne Woodward, and Robert Wagner are all as fine and professional as you’d expect, Richard Thomas (in his debut role, playing Woodward’s son) is remarkably bad. Now, I like Thomas. Some years back, I saw him do a “King John” in which he absolutely nailed the role. But here, just starting out, he so overacts that I felt like it was all the more seasoned professionals could do to refrain from smacking him.

So you’re got your bad construction and your distracting performance, but it’s a racing movie, right? The racing must be pretty good. Nope. It’s just a bunch of shots of cars and closeups of eyes, with an announcer telling me what’s actually happening. I admit that I’m not a race fan, finding the sport to be even more boring than golf. But a good racing movie should have drawn me in nonetheless, made me feel the rush when the good guy passes the bad. Nope. I fell asleep during the climactic race.

As performers, I like Newman, Woodward, and Wagner. I’d have loved to see them together in a better film. Unfortunately, this isn’t it. WINNING is a loser.